Communist Burma: consequences for its minorities?

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Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy

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The country had a strong pro-Chinese communist party and it was in rebellion against the government for decades. Assume it comes to power within 10 years of independence. What would its attitude be towards Burma's minorities? Would it promise some of them independence on its way to power, and if so would it keep its promises? Would the others get autonomy? Would some minorities rebel against the Communists?

Here's a list of what I consider the most important of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_people (instability could spread to their ethnic brothers in India)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chin_peoples (ditto)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingpo_people (most or all of their territory is claimed by China)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahu_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Karen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa'O_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhine_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people
 

basileus

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy said:
The country had a strong pro-Chinese communist party and it was in rebellion against the government for decades. Assume it comes to power within 10 years of independence. What would its attitude be towards Burma's minorities? Would it promise some of them independence on its way to power, and if so would it keep its promises? Would the others get autonomy? Would some minorities rebel against the Communists?

Here's a list of what I consider the most important of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_people (instability could spread to their ethnic brothers in India)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chin_peoples (ditto)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingpo_people (most or all of their territory is claimed by China)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahu_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Karen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa'O_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhine_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people
Click to expand...

It would have been best fror them than OTL, IMHO. They'd be mostly ignored, and kept content with "federalization" on a Soviet model, their leaders coopted into the system. the TatMaDaw (army) would be a less brutal institution in the public eye, as the political police would make all the dirty work and the Party would keep power firmly in civilian hands.
 

Hyperbolus

Would a communist-dominated government not exile the Indian population though?
OTL they constituted the majority of Burma's middle class, and their being driven out by the military junta (to a certain extent by the junta's predecessors also) was an economic disaster from which the country has yet to completely recover.
 

basileus

Alex Richards said:
Well, lets just say this is because things could easily end up becoming very nasty for everyone rather than just the minorities.
Click to expand...

This. And living in marginal areas has sometimes (not for most of the unlucky Tibetans) proved to be a blessing in disguise in totalitarian regimes.
 

Riguni

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy said:
You may not think that once the Communists begin imitating Mao's "brilliant" projects.
Click to expand...

Burmese society, similar to the Chinese tends to place collective achievements above the individual. This means, overall improvements for society might have bigger weight than some dead "counterrevolutionaries" here and there. Maoism in China had some fantastic aspects and some of Mao's ideas regarding rural health care providing in the communes were indeed brilliant.
http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2008_L0_1.htm
http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/china/life-expectancy-at-birth
Look at how life expectancy sharply rose during the Cultural Revolution.
As for Burma:
The ne win regime was terrible on human rights, a maoist burma could have been much less bad, still arguably brutal. The communists could win sympathies by some minorities for well-made social policies. The more religious ones like the rohingya, bengali, whatever could never support them. They are quite conservative and they could never accept a CPB mainly consisting of bamar Burmese, whether it's the communists, ne win, u nu, aung san, or whomever you like. The bamar also tend to dislike rohingyabengalis and this might not vanish under the materialist objective conditions umbrella. Since maoists emphasized a combination of local commune decision-making with a strong central government i do not think a "federalized soviet model" would have emerged. Support by national minorities would depend on their inclusion in the party, in some decision-making and in social policies. It could have worked or not-difficult to say. The central committee of the CPB consisted mainly of bamar people, however.

Achieving power 10 years after independence is not realistic, in my opinion.
The CPB only received attraction by the Chinese after the 1962 ne win coup and his soft backing by the soviets. Have the Chinese send much more aid through the rainforesty Yunnan-Burma border and the CPB guerilla emerge victorous in a civil war, let us say, in 1968.
The problem of us and soviet response remains, however. The 1960s were a time where the Chinese messed with both superpowers, which was among the reasons the 60s student movement loved them so much. I wonder whether substantial Chinese intervention for a Burmese revolution could have triggered a joint us-soviet response turning southeast asia into even more of a mess. Have the Burmese revolution in the 1970s and the US would have done nothing.
My timeline:
1962-Chinese aid for the CPB begins
1968-soviets endorse ne win, leading to US wish for regime change, even accepting it coming from China to weaken prospect of soviet southeast asia
1969-Sino-soviet conflict at its top and beginning of PRC-US relaxation allows for much more aid to CPB with little to no US opposition, starting civil war
1975-Burmese maoist revolution (not as stupid and sick programmes as the khmer rouge have)
1982-Sino-Burmese split
1983/4-US, USSR and PRC announce support and aid donation for national liberation movements to topple the Burmese regime, soon these different groups, disunited and weak fight against each other and lose against the Burmese military
1989-protests against regime take place, however they soon dissolve because of disorganization; regime continues its own "anti-revisionism", rejecting globalization and disconnecting itself largely from the rest of the world like north korea
2016-regime continues to exist to this day, declared as most secretive and isolated state on earth
 

Johnrankins

Riguni said:
Burmese society, similar to the Chinese tends to place collective achievements above the individual. This means, overall improvements for society might have bigger weight than some dead "counterrevolutionaries" here and there. Maoism in China had some fantastic aspects and some of Mao's ideas regarding rural health care providing in the communes were indeed brilliant.
http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2008_L0_1.htm
http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/china/life-expectancy-at-birth
Look at how life expectancy sharply rose during the Cultural Revolution.
As for Burma:
The ne win regime was terrible on human rights, a maoist burma could have been much less bad, still arguably brutal. The communists could win sympathies by some minorities for well-made social policies. The more religious ones like the rohingya, bengali, whatever could never support them. They are quite conservative and they could never accept a CPB mainly consisting of bamar Burmese, whether it's the communists, ne win, u nu, aung san, or whomever you like. The bamar also tend to dislike rohingyabengalis and this might not vanish under the materialist objective conditions umbrella. Since maoists emphasized a combination of local commune decision-making with a strong central government i do not think a "federalized soviet model" would have emerged. Support by national minorities would depend on their inclusion in the party, in some decision-making and in social policies. It could have worked or not-difficult to say. The central committee of the CPB consisted mainly of bamar people, however.

Achieving power 10 years after independence is not realistic, in my opinion.
The CPB only received attraction by the Chinese after the 1962 ne win coup and his soft backing by the soviets. Have the Chinese send much more aid through the rainforesty Yunnan-Burma border and the CPB guerilla emerge victorous in a civil war, let us say, in 1968.
The problem of us and soviet response remains, however. The 1960s were a time where the Chinese messed with both superpowers, which was among the reasons the 60s student movement loved them so much. I wonder whether substantial Chinese intervention for a Burmese revolution could have triggered a joint us-soviet response turning southeast asia into even more of a mess. Have the Burmese revolution in the 1970s and the US would have done nothing.
My timeline:
1962-Chinese aid for the CPB begins
1968-soviets endorse ne win, leading to US wish for regime change, even accepting it coming from China to weaken prospect of soviet southeast asia
1969-Sino-soviet conflict at its top and beginning of PRC-US relaxation allows for much more aid to CPB with little to no US opposition, starting civil war
1975-Burmese maoist revolution (not as stupid and sick programmes as the khmer rouge have)
1982-Sino-Burmese split
1983/4-US, USSR and PRC announce support and aid donation for national liberation movements to topple the Burmese regime, soon these different groups, disunited and weak fight against each other and lose against the Burmese military
1989-protests against regime take place, however they soon dissolve because of disorganization; regime continues its own "anti-revisionism", rejecting globalization and disconnecting itself largely from the rest of the world like north korea
2016-regime continues to exist to this day, declared as most secretive and isolated state on earth
Click to expand...

A lot of that life expectancy jump was simply because once Mao took over the Chinese were neither fighting each other or the Japanese. Wars have a tendency of dropping life expectancy, you know. I would expect the government being no less brutal than the previous one. Communists were known for being pretty brutal for a reason.
 

Riguni

So why did life expectancy continue to rise during the 60s, 70s, even and especially during the cultural revolution to an extent not foreseen by any other developing country?
According to your logic, it should have risen in the 50s during wartime recovery and then come to a halt. But no, it wasn't like that, it continued to rise in higher levels than in other developing countries.
Communists were known to be brutal for many reasons, and many people in maoist China believed their revolution was indeed "liberation" for a reason, you know.

Edit: And i never said their maoist revolution (in burma) wouldn' t be bloody. However, you know which government the maoists fought against? They fought against the ne win regime (burmese road to socialism) which in itself was brutal and a terrible mess, barely an improvement compared to a bunch of the craziest maoists.
 

Johnrankins

Riguni said:
So why did life expectancy continue to rise during the 60s, 70s, even and especially during the cultural revolution to an extent not foreseen by any other developing country?
According to your logic, it should have risen in the 50s during wartime recovery and then come to a halt. But no, it wasn't like that, it continued to rise in higher levels than in other developing countries.
Communists were known to be brutal for many reasons, and many people in maoist China believed their revolution was indeed "liberation" for a reason, you know.

Edit: And i never said their maoist revolution (in burma) wouldn' t be bloody. However, you know which government the maoists fought against? They fought against the ne win regime (burmese road to socialism) which in itself was brutal and a terrible mess, barely an improvement compared to a bunch of the craziest maoists.
Click to expand...

Because both the Chinese-Japanese war and the Chinese Civil War took a very heavy toll on China that took a very long time to recover from. No country I know of fought for a longer period than China did by the 1950's. The farther down you are pushed the faster you spring back up. Most of the Third World wasn't hit nearly as hard as China. That is where the Japanese made their main effort. Nor did most have a long and bloody civil war afterwards.
 

Riguni

Johnrankins said:
Because both the Chinese-Japanese war and the Chinese Civil War took a very heavy toll on China that took a very long time to recover from. No country I know of fought for a longer period than China did by the 1950's. The farther down you are pushed the faster you spring back up. Most of the Third World wasn't hit nearly as hard as China. That is where the Japanese made their main effort. Nor did most have a long and bloody civil war afterwards.
Click to expand...

So that is why Chinese life expectancy rose higher than in countries with a lesser history of warlording, such as much of africa and india. :coldsweat:
China did not only recover, it had the highest life expectancy in the developing world in the 70s, despite other countries having not nearly as many devastating domestic conflicts. You go up after a low, but you do not go up, up, further up, upper than everybody else in the third world, only to explain this with recovery from war. :neutral: Chinese life expectancy rates started from a quite similar point to parliamentary democratic governments such as india but China achieved much, much more.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212/#!po=0.925926
Its done by Stanford and they primarily explain this with maoist policy. To recover from war in such an enormous way you do need an effective government to provide with good and efficient public health policy and this is exactly what the maoists did. Since most people would claim communists cause only devastation, it appears to be a miracle they achieved more than a parliamentary government. Or wait, maybe the propaganda is utterly wrong.

Why did general chiangs government before japanese invasion, during "peace times" fail to provide for public health in china? Because it was crap? Because, other than the maoists it was incompetent, not even controlling its own country leaving it to a bunch of bloodthirsty warlords? Why did life expectancy especially rise during the cultural revolution, only to stop from rising after the first serious reforms during "reform and opening up"? Oh yea, it's just wartime recovery. :coldsweat:
So, the "wartime recovery" in China led to the highest increase of life expectancy in human history (by the biggest mass murderer;)). The "wartime recovery" led to the highest absolute life expectancy and lowest child mortality in the developing world. The "wartime recovery" occured especially during the cultural revolution, only to stop exactly when maoist policies were stopped. "Wartime recovery" ended. Who knows maybe china is still after its century of devastation in a "wartime recovery" until 2050 meaning anything effective the CCP does will be "objectively" attributed to it.:kisskiss:

The communists killing people was not "well-intended" or "justice against former warlord murderer criminals" (i could claim the same here, but i do not) but the communists doing something good once in a while was "wartime recovery". I wish every government could have such effective wartime recoveries (public health programmes) as the maoist one. :)
 

Blackfox5

I think you are overstating things. In terms of Chinese life expectancy growing faster, that can be explained by the low starting point in 1949. It reflects a China that has been at war for 12 years straight. If you are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of the PRC's policies, you probably need to use a baseline starting several years later where China can be said to be "returned to normal", but prior to the Great Leap Forward when life expectancy plunged again because of the famine. That would help us eliminate the "catch up" from the initial recovery from the end of the civil war. I think 1954 or so would be a good starting point (as it reflects China internally has recovered and no longer has casualties from the Korean War).

Also, it is unfair to compare China to Africa and India. Those countries are in very different circumstances in their states of development than China. Most of the countries in Africa didn't even exist prior to colonialism, and they lacked any kind of real state institutions. South Asia had its own set of problems and is very different in its cultural and governmental institutions than East Asia. If you compare China in 1980 to similar Asian countries (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia), its achievements don't look so impressive. China just seems to be converging on the East Asian mean. South Korea is a good example as like China in 1949, it began 1953 with the effects of a devastating war on its own soil. Nevertheless by 1980 its life expectancy was on par with China's (and today is about 5 years higher).

So while we need to acknowledge that after the Great Leap Forward, that Communist China made substantial improvements in its life expectancy, it simply reflected the typical East Asian average and improvements once it stopped murdering its own people en masse. If you look at the life expectancy today, we see once again that for the most part the East Asians are grouped very similarly (although within a range) with other regions diverging from them. If growth in life expectancy slowed in China after 1980, it was probably because the "low hanging fruit" (basic sanitation, effective transportation network, basic medical care) was achieved, and future growth had to be done by achieving much harder milestones. Note I am not including Japan since it was a developed country, or the Philippines which is different culturally from East Asian countries heavily influenced by the ancient Chinese civilization.

I would be really interested in what a 1954-1980 comparison would look like, and whether it is as impressive as you are trying to make it out to be. Or compare 1949-1960 and see what if there was any improvement at all because of the Great Leap Forward.

As for why the Nationalists didn't achieve the same during the Nanking Decade, well, the situations were not analagous. China was still very well divided when the Nationalists assumed power. It can hardly be said to be "peacetime" as Chiang was constantly having to deal with rebellions and wars - the ongoing war with the Communists, the Central Plains War, the Fujian rebellion, and various attacks by Japan. The Nationalists had a lot more to do. In 1949, the country was united and Mao didn't need to deal with other issues like Chiang did from 1927-1937. Nor was it Chiang's fault that the country was divided. It had been since 1916. Chiang was actually quite competent in uniting the country (and he did it alone, without any help as the Communists received from the Soviets in 1945-1949). He controlled far more in 1937 than he did in 1927, and even during WWII managed to bring more of the country under his control in 1945 than he did in 1937 by bringing Xinjiang, Guiyang, and Yunnan under KMT rule. If Chiang had amanged to win the Chinese Civil War in 1949 rather than Mao, I have every confidence he'd achieve the same results if not better (but without the huge decline during the Great Leap Forward). Certainly Taiwan performed well under him.

Riguni said:
The "wartime recovery" led to the highest absolute life expectancy and lowest child mortality in the developing world.
Click to expand...

This is just factually wrong. China in 1980 did not have the highest absolute life expectancy in the developing world. That it may have increased the most in the years you selected (1949-1980) could be true. But nevertheless in 1980, Mexico was higher at 66.6 (China was 66.5), Vietnam was 67.4, Singapore was 72.2, Argentina was 69.5, Malaysia was 68.1, Costa Rica was 71.5, and Israel was 73.5. All of these countries would be considered "developing" in 1980. All numbers from the World Bank's website. I did not check child mortality, but I assume it will reflect the same in general terms.
 

CalBear

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This is sort of the textbook example of why you DO NOT necro. The post that dug this out of the grave was in response to four year old thread and to a since Banned member.
 
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